United Irishman's grave found after storm brings down Fairy tree

Ivan Little, Sunday Life, April 20th, 2025

GRAVE OF REBEL WHO ESCAPED HANGMAN'S NOOSE FINALLY FOUND AT OLD CITY CEMETERY

A fairy tree that gave a Belfast cemetery its name has blown down in a storm and revealed the 'hidden' grave of a Catholic man who led a largely Protestant rebellion against Britain more than 200 years ago.

Mark Doherty, who gives tours of the Friar's Bush cemetery, which is the city's oldest Christian burial ground, said the discovery of the final resting place of 93-year-old Daniel McNamara was an “exciting and important historical development”.

McNamara was one of the last surviving leaders of the United Irishmen's ultimately unsuccessful attempt in 1798 to overthrow British rule in Ireland and establish an independent republic. Another leader, Henry Joy McCracken, was hanged in the centre of Belfast.

Mark said it was always believed that McNamara's grave was “somewhere” in the Stranmillis Road graveyard because after his death from natural causes on St Patrick's Day 1869, a newspaper said he was buried a few feet from the “old thorn bush in the cemetery”, but the precise location wasn't known.

But Mark said a storm earlier this year toppled the fairy tree and uncovered a fallen, but intact, sandstone gravestone nearby.

He added that after scraping mud, moss and grass from it, he was able to read a long inscription remembering the lives of McNamara's parents but there was no room to record all their children's names. Mark said he would like to see the stone raised again to see if Daniel McNamara's name is on the back and if it's not, there it might be added.

He revealed that the National Graves Association, which maintains the graves of old Irish republicans, has expressed an interest in re-instating the McNamara headstone.

Mark told how an opponent of the United Irishmen, William Quaile, an Orangeman and member of a local yeomanry, was also buried in Friar's Bush cemetery but his coffin was dug up and later found on the banks of the River Lagan before it was re-interred elsewhere.

Mass Burial Site

He explained that the Quaile story is just part of the “remarkable” history of Friar's Bush graveyard which served as a mass burial site for victims of the cholera epidemics of the 1830s and the great Irish famine of the 1840s.

Mark said the friar remembered in the name of the cemetery was buried there in the early 1700s after he was sentenced to death for holding a prohibited mass during penal times.

He was able to save sections of the fairy tree which was felled by this year's storm and has appealed online for suggestions about what they could turn it into.

According to folklore, cutting down or damaging a fairy tree is believed to invite bad luck, severe illness or even death and on social media a number of posters have urged Mark not to have anything to do with the friar's bush because “there are too many stories of misfortune around fallen hawthorn trees”.

The cemetery is maintained by staff from Botanic Gardens next door and supervisor Colin Agnew said he hopes a new hawthorn bush can be propagated from parts of the old tree.

* Mark Doherty's tours of Friar's Bush cemetery take place every Friday morning at 11am.